High Tea Cupcakes – Orange Cranberry Scones Baked in Teacups

These high tea cupcakes are really scones, but since I literally baked them in a cup, I decided it was legit to call them cupcakes. It’s my blog, so I can do what I want.

I love that scones aren’t quite as sweet as most cakes. I used to think that they were less caloric than other baked goods, but I was deceived. They are loaded with butter and cream and worth every single calorie you’ll get from them!

These high tea cupcakes are made with dried cranberries and flavored with a hint of orange, but you could just as easily make them with chocolate chips, raisins, or currants. For extra pizazz, they can be topped with some jam and clotted cream.

If you don’t have oven-safe teacups, you can bake the same recipe as scones (by putting balls of dough directly onto an oiled cookie sheet) or as traditional cupcakes (in cupcake tins) as shown above.

Either way, they are sure to disappear!

High Tea Cupcake Recipe

I got the recipe for these high tea cupcakes from Barefoot Contessa. I modified her scone recipe to bake in teacups. I also added some orange extract to kick up the orange flavor a bit and decreased the amount of salt (I’m not a big salt fan). Below is my modified version of her recipe.

your cupcakes in the orange is an old scout trick..we made those during a cub scout daycamp and they are YUMMY! I had not thought of doing them over a grill, though. I also am going to try these yummy sounding/looking scone cakes. clever and cute!

Couldn’t help but mention, though, that your posts about ‘high tea’ seem to be more in the way of being about ‘afternoon tea’. High tea is a working-class meal that used to be served when labourers got in from the fields/factory and includes pies, cold cuts of meats, cheeses, sandwiches (not the delicate cucumber kind), pasties and so on. It’s definitely not a fancy china and grand hotel kinda affair! Whereas afternoon tea is the aristocratic/high society thing, with cute cakes and scones, sandwiches without crusts, and paper doilies.

Love your website. But please, please, please stop calling afternoon tea “high tea.” You seem to share the impression, as do many Americans, that high tea is a fancy, upscale repast. It is exactly the opposite – high tea is a working class meal, generally eaten at what Americans would call dinner time, that consists of meat, veg, potatoes – but NOT scones or little sandwiches or clotted cream or dainty cakes.
Please! It’s “afternoon tea” or (if scones with jam and clotted cream) a “cream tea”, but never never never high tea. Let’s not give the Brits another reason to laugh at us Americans. Thanks.

I am so glad to see your scones are ROUND. It really bugs me that here in the States they always sell them in triangles. LOL. So glad to see your clotted cream recipe. I want to make it so my girls will know what I have been talking about all this time.

I just wanted to say that love this site! I’m so glad that I found it. Orange and Cranberry muffins have been my absolute favourite since I moved to the north of England about 11 years ago. I used to buy them at the local bakery but for some reason they stopped selling them. I don’t know why they were just sooo delicious. Now I’ll have a go making them myself.

These are interesting recipes, but not scones, which are more like our baking powder biscuits only richer and more delicious, and, of course, they are always round. They are the perfect foil for clotted cream and strawberry jam.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

[...] in 2009, I baked Ina Garten’s scone recipe in cupcake form and in little tea cups. Have a look! If you prefer, you could bake these pumpkin pie spice chip scones as cupcakes as well following [...]

[...] Here’s how to enjoy a cuppa even if you don’t really do high tea. And since you might not really be in Britain, it’s probably all right to admit these delicacies are not really cupcakes, but in fact highly comestible scones. Orange cranberry scones baked in tea cups to be precise. Made with dried cranberries and flavored with a hint of orange (or chocolate chips, raisins or currants) they are worth every calorie gained from them. Source Cupcake Project [...]

[...] Here’s how to enjoy a cuppa even if you don’t really do high tea. And since you might not really be in Britain, it’s probably all right to admit these delicacies are not really cupcakes, but in fact highly comestible scones. Orange cranberry scones baked in tea cups to be precise. Made with dried cranberries and flavored with a hint of orange (or chocolate chips, raisins or currants) they are worth every calorie gained from them. Source Cupcake Project [...]

[...] Here’s how to enjoy a cuppa even if you don’t really do high tea. And since you might not really be in Britain, it’s probably all right to admit these delicacies are not really cupcakes, but in fact highly comestible scones. Orange cranberry scones baked in tea cups to be precise. Made with dried cranberries and flavored with a hint of orange (or chocolate chips, raisins or currants) they are worth every calorie gained from them. Source Cupcake Project [...]

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